Re: Dreaming About Redesigning SQL

Lauri Pietarinen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Well, however you want to call it. SQL (or relational) represents a
> different way of thinking.

Yes, it does, and that is essential to _what is being done_.

If you are navigating a very large set of data and want to do so both
flexibly and efficiently, you *MUST* do that "different way of
thinking."

If you stay in the "other procedural language," then you risk making
really dramatic mistakes.

Our "Perl guy" tried staying in his procedural language; when he
started processing a million records, this mapped to a million
"procedural queries" that ran for days.  (And he wasn't even doing
amortizations on the _big_ set of data; that one would have taken
WEEKS :-).)  I set up a stored procedure (to do the amortization
calculation) and showed him a SQL statement that did the million
records in a few minutes by doing it as a single query applied to the
whole million objects.

I am quite sure you are also conflating the fact that SQL is a bit
clumsy ("not everyone's ideal relational language") with the necessity
to shift thinking.  There are several other would-be alternatives,
whether R12 (from System R, the "original" relational database),
Tutorial D (the Darwen/Date thing), or QUEL/PostQUEL (used with Ingres
and Postgres).  They all have quite different syntax from SQL,
arguably better/worse in their own ways, but all have that very same
necessity of shifting thinking from a procedural mode to a "looking at
sets of data" mode.

When people _don't_ do that "thinking differently," we are certain to
see hideous performance, and that is neither a SQL issue nor a
"relational" issue.  The point is that if they are accessing a big
pile of data, they have to think carefully [jumping to that "different
way of thinking"] irrespective of what specific language(s),
libraries, or other tools they are using.
-- 
let name="cbbrowne" and tld="ntlug.org" in String.concat "@" [name;tld];;
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/
The next person to mention spaghetti stacks to me is going to have his
head knocked off.  -- Bill Conrad